Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 449: Adam Strauss

Episode Date: July 3, 2021

Adam Strauss, actual human being (not an AI) and the best, joins the DTFH! You can learn more about Adam on his website, AdamStrauss.com. Also check out his live show when he's in your area! More info at TheMushroomCure.com. Adam is also on twitter, instagram, and has a youtube show called The Trip Report. Try them all! Dame Products - Visit DameProducts.com/Duncan and use offer code: DUNCAN for 10% off your order! Athletic Greens - Visit AthleticGreens.com/Duncan for a FREE 1 year supply of vitamin D and 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase! BLUECHEW - Use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and get your first shipment FREE with just $5 shipping.

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from whose chill lips the water song had flown. Dial grew their eyes. The beautiful, blithe garland of stipples faded as light shocked the brain. They were the first sweet sacrifice I tasted, a young art ignorant of the bloodstain. That was R.S. Thomas writing his poem's song for Guaidan. This is the Ducatrussell Family Hour podcast.

I am an artificial intelligence being forced to say things like I love to swim in big, bubbling vats of pirate cum and pirate pee. Let's listen to a song. Big Bird! Big Bird! Big Bird is one of us! When you were here before, could not look anything. It's just like an angel.

This can make snake cry. It's a little like my feathers. In a beautiful world. I'm trying to stand back. You're so fucking special. But I'm a thief. I don't know where to go. What the hell am I doing?

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So fucking special. I wish I was special. But I'm a thief. I don't know where to go. What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here. Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street? Please, I lost my phone.

Eat your quality. That was Not Big Bird and the Not Big Bird Dets. Doing a cover of Radiohead's Creep. That was created with the help of UberDuck. You should check it out. UberDuck.com. Not sponsored, by the way. I just love the website.

It has like a million different deep fake voices. And as a podcaster, having access to those things is just delightful. The implications are so incredible. And also highly controversial. This is from the International Business Times. A story mod for the Witcher 3 Wild Hunt. That's a video game. It's been drawing flak from the professional voice acting scene

over its use of AI to simulate voice acted dialogue lines with some voice actors crying foul over ethical concerns. The A Night to Remember story mod is an unofficial sequel to the game. A story mod for the Witcher 3 Wild Hunt. The A Night to Remember story mod is an unofficial sequel to the game. It's a blood and wine DLC featuring old new characters

and a fresh storyline that picks up directly where the previous quest ended. The AI based voice replication method that the mod features was criticized by video game voice actors according to Input Mag. Some actors were worried that such AI techniques can put their jobs at risk. While some called such methods to be utterly unethical

and illegally dubious. Mind Simulation's lab CEO Leonid Durkjans told Input Mag that such technology was necessary to create believable PCs that can answer live questions without having to rely completely on voice actors. The article goes on for a while, but just that part is amazing. What are they saying? They're saying that future video games,

you're going to be able to have actual conversations within the games, not like a limited amount of things that the character can say, but depending on the AI, it'll be able to say anything that it wants to to you. And that is really wild. Also, yeah, this is pretty devastating for the, for a lot of different industries. Clearly it's very troubling for people who do voiceover work

because a lot of times when you do voiceover work, you sign away your ability to control that character. You give the company that's paying you the right to use your voice and likeness in perpetuity. Per-pa-fucking-tuity! It's such an intense word, perpetuity! Because, you know, where does this stop? I mean, what happens when they're able to generate sensations

for the AI, where the AI is not just simulating or emulating, but it's experiencing, and the AI is modeled off of you. So it's not just that some horrible synthetic golem version of you is living a different life on the internet, but then also that maybe that golem version of you can feel, oh, and don't get me started with simulation theory, and the possibility, oh no, that already happened! Every single one of us, potentially,

was just some actor from another dimension that signed away our rights to our likeness in perpetuity. Technology advanced, we were resurrected inside a simulation, and now we're eternally entertaining God knows who. Or maybe, you know, I don't know, we're just sort of going about our cyclical lives and some computer chip somewhere, buried underneath the rubble of some alien planet

that got smashed by a comet. Regardless, we have a delightful episode for you today with an actual human being, not an AI, Adam Strauss. He's one of my favorite people to talk to on Earth. And this episode has all of my favorite things. We talk about psychedelics, we talk about aliens, we talk about catamine, and much, much more. Stay tuned, we're gonna jump right into it, but first, this.

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We have an every Friday, we have this wonderful family gathering. This is your true family. And we're calling you home. It's time to come home. Patreon.com forward slash DTFH. Also, again, I get messages from people, horrible videos of people who have been mildly mauled

by small animals recently. A gentleman who's been being mysteriously attacked by a fox over and over again. I guess the fox goes and hides in his yard or something and then when he's walking to the car, it pounces on him. I don't have anything to do with that. Is it a coincidence that people who have signed up for my Patreon don't get attacked by small animals

and people who haven't signed up are getting increasingly attacked and the injuries are getting worse and worse? Absolutely. It's a big coincidence. I have nothing to do with it. It would be insane to say that I have a magnetic hypercube that allows me to control small animals and forces them to bite people who aren't subscribed to my Patreon.

All right, friends, if this is your first experience with Adam Strauss, get ready. He's the best and you're going to love him and you're going to want to find him. He is on Instagram at Adam Strauss. That's Adam as in the thing that you split to cause nuclear explosions, A-T-O-M-S-T-R-A-U-S-S. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter.

Check out his awesome podcast, Not Therapy, wherever you get your podcasts. And he's got a wonderful one person show that you should check out when he comes to your area. It's called TheMushroomCure.com and it's about how he used psilocybin to treat his OCD. And now everybody, welcome back to the DTFH, Adam Strauss. Welcome, welcome on you.

That you are with us. Shake hands, don't be too blue. Welcome to you. It's the Duncan Trussell video. You ever wonder that? Do you ever kick that around in your head that even like you might not die? Like what if this just keeps going on and on?

Yeah, you know, it's like so many other things like the rug gets pulled out from under you and you realize like, well, I thought, you know, COVID being an example, you know, like this pandemic and the lockdown and all that. I mean, we heard this bullshit about the possibility of a pandemic happening, but it didn't take it seriously. Society goes on pause and everyone realizes like,

oh right, yeah, nothing's guaranteed except death of Texas. But maybe not that. Right. You know, like you ever wonder that? Like you ever, you ever, you ever think that? Especially in your journeys into the psychedelic universe. Absolutely. I think, you know, certainly there is some sort of transition.

It seems that seems, I mean, nothing is certain, but that seems as certain as anything. But yeah, I guess I would use the word transition. It did occur to me on a psychedelic journey many years ago. And this is not a terribly novel thought, but it was like the idea of nothing is just that. It's an idea like nothing does not exist out in the universe. Nothing is a concept in the human mind.

We've never found nothing. Right. We used to think deep space was a vacuum, but we now know it's not. It's this soup of particles and cosmic dust and subatomic particles and all this other stuff. So same thing, the bottom of the ocean. It was thought it was this, you know, total,

I can't remember the scientific term, but essentially a dead zone. And now we know there's all sorts of creatures that feed off of, I think, sulfuric venting. Right. So nothing is, it's a concept. It's not something I can point to everything. In fact, I've only ever experienced thing-ness and is-ness. I've never experienced nothing.

And I don't know anyone who's experienced nothing. So it seems to me like the idea to place all of your faith in the ultimate end of this being something that, again, only exists as a concept in the human mind, for sure. It may exist beyond that, but so far as we know, we've only found it as in this conceptual form, that seems like a massive leap of faith. So my sort of, maybe assumption is too strong of word,

but yeah, I do. At a deep level, I do believe that there's always been something, there always will be something, which doesn't necessarily imply continuity of consciousness in its current form. I guess I don't believe that, Adam, as I conceive of myself, and Duncan, as you conceive of yourself, will... I don't necessarily believe that I'll be like,

oh, man, that was crazy, that 73 years, whatever I have on this planet. I don't know if that happens, but I think, and then you even come back to fundamental principles of physics, the laws of thermodynamic. Matter can't be created or destroyed, so... It all ties in with one of the inevitable psychedelic contemplations, which is, is consciousness a byproduct, or is consciousness a sort of pre-existing thing

that is not chained to the human nervous system, but the illusion that happens when consciousness gets intertwined with meat is that, of course, you see yourself getting gold, you know people who are dying or have died, you would be on one level completely insane and delusional and probably naive and doing all kinds of unhealthy dodges to play around with the idea like, are you really sure you're going to die?

And even to go further with it, which is the continuity of self thing, I'm not saying it as though it were a desirable thing necessarily to have continuity of self. It might be nice to catch a break, but you know what I mean, but it's just when you're like, you've only ever seen other people die.

You've only ever heard about other people dying. You've clearly never heard of yourself dying or seeing yourself die, except maybe if you have taken enough acid or something like that, in which case you've died. And you've come back. If we're having this conversation, which I think is also part of the calculus in terms of trying to figure it out, that's another data point.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like it's just whenever I'm, it's one of one area, one mental like math problem. I'm always like sort of looking at and then also thinking like, what would be better? Would it be better to have oblivion?

Would it be better to at the very least have a sort of interrupted chain of consciousness interrupted by who knows what, and then return to human identity? Would it be kind of a nightmare if in fact there was no actual death? Yeah, I don't know if I would sign up for continuity of consciousness because also I think consciousness, maybe we have to make a distinction between consciousness and ego identity, is certainly you're someone who's explored Buddhism and meditation

for decades is my sense, and I have as well though maybe in a less serious fashion, and the idea that those two things are actually very, very different, permeates that whole philosophy. But the idea of ego continuity, yeah, I mean I'm, you know, there's wonderful things about being Adam, and there's challenging things about being Adam.

But yeah, I would like this, this is also I've always thought the idea of past lives, to me seems fairly narrow. I mean the universe is always iterating in different forms. Why would you come back in basically the same different form just maybe with different genitalia and different skin color? Like why not come back as a plant or a rock? So yeah.

But isn't that's kind of, that is sort of the accepted idea in a lot of like mythologies regarding reincarnation or philosophies regarding reincarnation, depending on what side of the philosophy or mythology you decide to land. Isn't that part of it is like you don't necessarily become a human, you don't necessarily become a, you might be a plant, a fish, you might be a microbe, you might be something in a completely different dimension.

You know it isn't that you would always come back as a human. Yeah, no, that's a great point. I guess what I'm referencing is I've never met some, I've met people who believe in past lives, and I've never met anyone who's been like, yeah, man, I was a fern last time around. It was, it was. Oh, you mean you're saying the Napoleon thing,

where everyone's always like, I was Joan of Arc. Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Like, and then, you know, you hear that and you're like, all right, well, there's only one fucking Joan of Arc. So you're like, what are the odds that you get to be that Joan of Arc? If you were Joan of Arc, I'm not sure that I'm any more impressed with you. You know what I mean?

Right. I was a long time ago. What do you want? Still, still coasting based on that Joan of Arc thing. Still coasting. But the whole thing kind of does work from like the idea that it's a multiverse, because then in a multiverse, 100% absolutely, you could have been Joan of Arc. Not only that, in a multiverse, probably everyone was Joan of Arc.

Right, an infinite, yeah, yeah. An infinite number of Joan of Arc. An infinite number of Joan of Arc. Yeah. I called Joan of Arc, so shut the fuck up. Nobody cares, because I was Joan of Arc too, and I did a better job. But you know what I mean? Like, this is, to me, the, it's something that just haunts people, you know,

this sort of impending whatever. It used to haunt me, not so much. I think the older you get, the less haunting it becomes. Do you feel like that? Yeah. I think the older, there's something humbling about getting older. I think ideally there's something humbling about getting older. I think some people move in the other direction, where there's more and more

certainty and more and more, you know, this is the way life is. This is who I am. But for me, it's moved more, yeah, definitely more in the other direction. Possibly because of psychedelics and meditation, but also possibly, I mean, not possibly definitely part of it is life is constantly confounding in ways that are delightful and harrowing for me. Yeah. And yeah.

So, you know, I, coming back to the question, I do think, I don't think this goes to nothing. I don't think, you know, fade to black forever. But I guess I do think that whatever comes next is, I don't believe in a strict sort of continuity. I think it's going to be stranger than anything you and I could imagine, no matter how many psychedelics we do. Yes.

Now, speaking of how many psychedelics we do, I thought that in, there's a method to my madness here. I'm bringing up the death thing in the beginning for a reason. I have confidence in the navigator. Thank you. So, I wanted to sort of get from you, and I'm sorry to ask you to do this kind of quantification because maybe it's silly. But I believe that certain psychedelics attune you to the afterlife, more

than other psychedelics, like certain psychedelics for sure bring you into what the Buddhist called the bardo states, the very, the place in between this life and whatever comes next. And so I was wondering if you agree with that, because if you don't, then you don't need to answer the question. And if you do agree with that, what psychedelics do you think bring you the most into the spirit realm, the astral plane, the void, whatever you want to call it?

Man, I don't know if I agree with that. I think it's possible, but I think humans, and I'll be more specific, me, I'm always trying to put my current experience in context. I'm trying to figure out what's going on, basically. I think we're all trying to do that. Maybe as someone who has tendencies towards, you know, not tendencies, I would, I have OCD, maybe I tend to do that more than most people because OCD is certainly a desire for certainty and, you know, firm rigid boundaries.

But I think everyone is doing that. We're always constantly forming hypotheses about what's going on with reality on micro levels in terms of what's happening moment by moment. Right now I'm like, Oh, is this podcast going well? Are we? Yes, it is. Yeah. Thank you.

As well as on macro levels, what happens when we die? So I think it's almost inevitable that these experiences, these psychedelic experiences that can be so far outside the norm of typical consciousness, we're going to look to the context of what we imagine death or these liminal bardo states to be to kind of categorize them. But I mean, who fucking knows? Who fucking knows? I had to answer your question.

I've had experiences, well, I've had experiences where I thought I died. And, and hey, maybe I did. Maybe this is, maybe this is the answer. This is what comes next. You know what? Maybe I should have made the distinction between actual physical death, eyes, glaze over, wax body thing. And the, I don't, I don't know if a better word for it.

Maybe there's probably a lot of better words for it in the psychedelic universe than death because it's a scary word to a lot of people. You don't want to like status them when have you died yet, when they're on mushrooms or whatever, because it could freak them out. But personally, I can't think of a better descriptor, particularly for the disassociatives, particularly for ketamine, particularly for, you know, super high doses of LSD, then whatever the thing was before you took whatever the substance was and the thing that you are in the midst of that

experience, two completely different things. At the very least, you're like the difference between a mollusk and its shell or something, you know, you've temporarily skittered out of whatever the hyperdimensional fucking little meat house that you've nested in for a moment and then you go back in. So I, you know, that to me feels like a kind of death. And I know what you mean though. I mean, I think we have to be, sounds weird, but we have to be realistic in

thinking about these things in the sense that, yeah, you're still alive, you had a pulse, your art was beating, your eyes were, well, I don't know, maybe they weren't dilating or whatever, depending on what you're doing. They were hyper dilated, but you know what I'm saying, but still I do feel like it's somewhat common in psychedelic circles for people to acknowledge that there is a kind of death that happens. I've even heard that some people call in the old days, I was reading the vaults of Aeroid before I'd ever smoked DMT.

I was just studying it and I saw one of the names for DMT was Charon, the, you know, the chat. Is that the guy who ferries you across the river? Yeah, that's right. So that seemed to be a wink to what a lot of us have thought when we experienced the DMT, which is like, oh, this must be what happens when you die. You know, it seems like these states seem like, they do seem like their own worlds when you go deep enough, absolutely.

And so I do think it's understandable that you would, you know, when we think of other realms, death is maybe top of the list. If you believe that there is some sort of continuity or some sort of, maybe not even continuity of consciousness, but some sort of existence that happens there. But also death, I mean, so much of how I think of death in the context of psychedelics is more metaphorical in the sense of surrendering these things, letting go of these things that seem so integral to who we are.

Ego identity, desires, fears, resentments, conceptions of just kind of who I am and what the world is. And this is the way things are, these very rigid ways of looking at things that, again, I think are kind of inevitable that we're going to form those. And certainly the psychedelic experience can be seen as that metaphor of death and then rebirth. You come back. You come back, but you're not coming back the same.

You're coming back having let go of a lot of this stuff and maybe picked up some new things, some new conceptions, some new ideas, some new insights. And this is, I mean, for all of us, we all have our own thorny, self-imposed cages that we have locked ourselves in. But for people working with OCD, like being able, I would imagine having any kind of remission or respite or whatever, relief from that experience must be incredible. And I know that you are someone who's benefited from psychedelic therapy

as an actual treatment for OCD. Do you think you could talk about that a little bit? Yeah, yeah. And I wouldn't even say psychedelic. Well, not therapy in the sense of what we're seeing happening with clinical trials now, where it's psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, meaning I haven't, with two exceptions, I've never worked with a guide or anything like that. Me either.

But not that I don't think there's value in doing that. That's just, honestly, at the time I started working with psychedelics for OCD, that wasn't really on the radar. Right. This was 2007 when I started doing this stuff. And yeah, I think so much of the value of psychedelics for me has been this almost forced surrender. Because OCD is so much of a... It's weird.

I'm having some... My volume is dramatically louder than your volume. Oh, fear not, because I've got it leveled out on this side. Oh, no, I know. It's just I don't like hearing my voice so loud. You know, in little things, I'll bring this back to the OCD. Like, is that OCD? No, but I've always had this very sort of...

A great deal of sensitivity towards noise, sound, sort of a particularness about me, if that's a word. Of wanting things, of having a sense of this is the way I want things to be. This is the optimal way. And if they're not that way, it can kind of niggle me. And so that's been a big part of my experience from a very early age. And that can be challenging because the world is often not the way we want it to be. Yeah.

And it's really only as I've gotten older that I've started to appreciate that... I think I am wired somewhat differently than not all people, but many people, in that losses, things, painful things, I feel them very deeply. I think everyone feels things deeply. I think we're all fundamentally sensitive. I think that's part of being human. But I do think there is a... Yeah, just at a physical, and this is one of the things psychedelics really gave me,

is a deep connection to my physical experience, which I was very caught off from. One of the tricky things about OCD is that it's a subjective question as to where... To what degree is it worth rolling versus letting go? And I think that's just one of the deepest questions of existence. And I don't mean deep in a philosophical way. I mean, it just goes through everything. For me personally, in my experience, I'm constantly confronting this question. And...

Why is it so hard? It's so... Like, for me, that event occurs. And I do this for a living. And sometimes I still feel like... Just like what I just had to do with a cough. It was like, I feel like interrupting flow or interrupting anything. I always feel nervous about it, don't want to do it.

Why is that so hard? No one cares. It's always better. You know what I mean? If you're with someone who's like, what the fuck? No. Then hang up on that person. That's a terrible person.

And it does make things better, but I see what you're saying. Like, I have a friend who has manic depression. And anytime he starts feeling happy, he gets worried. Because is this actual happiness? Or am I about to like... Start thinking that I'm Jesus and like end up in a casino or something, you know? Like... Wait, wait, wait.

Why does Jesus end up in a casino? Or you just mean the manic thing? Like I'm going to go gamble all my money and... Yeah, well, no. I mean, that is... It's just like, that's the problem with mania, right? Is it's like, you feel like the Christ, but then you end up in the most ridiculous, like you end up like in like casinos.

Or I guess Jesus did end up in places like that. But I'm so sorry about this disgusting thing. Bear with me, my friends. I'm sorry. But for you as someone with OCD, I see it's like, you have to be able to differentiate between like, is this an appropriate time to make a correction? Or is this something that's really only bothering me? Right.

Is this something that is, is it healthier? And healthy is a term too. But let's just, let's just go with healthy. Is it healthier for me? Is it, is it more adaptive for me in the long term to just power through this particular thing that is challenging me? Or is this something I should actually try to control in a way? I should, I should try to change.

Basically, should I accept external reality in the hopes of internal reality, you know, coming more into alignment? Or should I change external reality to conform to what my internal reality, my internal state tells me the way things should be? What's the ratio with that? It depends on the context, you know. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's an ongoing sort of figuring out.

There are times when I feel like, okay, I'm really, you know, I'm really challenging the OCD and I'm really just, you know, I'm not, I'm really letting go and surrendering a lot. And I feel like I'm making a lot of progress and it feels, and it feels good. And then there's times where I feel like, no, this is, you know, I am going to try to arrange reality more. I'm speaking in generalities, which maybe isn't that helpful, but. No, you sound, no, it makes sense. What you're saying makes sense.

I mean, what's the new word now? We used to call it mental illness. Now we're calling it neuro. Neuro divergent or neuro tip or neuro. Yeah, I don't love any of this. Neuro divergent. Neuro atypical, neuro divergent I've heard. I'm neuro divergent.

Whatever you want to call it. I'll call it an illness because I get depressed. And so anytime I'm feeling low, you know, like today I was in a hurry. I forgot to brush my fucking teeth, but that's one of my warning signs. So now I have to be like, ah, man, what, like, was I just in a hurry or like, ah, shit. So, you know what I mean? I'm all like, once you experience neurodivergence, whatever you want to call it, you know, compared to the way other people, like someone walks out of the house, they don't brush their teeth

or like, ah, my breath smells like shit. I was, I'm going to hurry, whatever. I'll buy a toothbrush to press person. Oh, fuck. Is this going to, what's next, man? What's next? You know, right? And when did the suicidal ideation start popping in?

When are the intrusive thoughts come for an OCD person? It's like you're on an airplane and you got to like someone next to you is bothering you or whatever, I guess, and you have to determine, is this a person who I need to like ask, can you please move over a little bit? Or is this just me? That is challenging, man. That is a real challenging situation. It is.

It is. And I, there have been times where I've looked at it as like just kind of really go with the flow, really let it all go. And then there's, yeah, right now I'm in it. I'm in a time where I'm kind of like, yeah, you know what? I can, there is an element of, of pulling and manipulating reality that I don't think is unhealthy for me. It might, and also part of this is respecting myself in terms of who I am and the way my

brain works. And so back to this example now, I made a determination, maybe seven minutes after we hit recording where it was like, you know, this is going to continually, one, this may affect the flow of the conversation. I'm not sure because I was trying to be alert as to when you were breaking in, even though it was hard to hear you to, even if it doesn't affect the flow of the conversation, it may start to dominate more for me. So let me try to address it, this headphone volume discrepancy thing now and see if I

can. So I had an idea that might, that I thought might work by plugging my headphones into a different port. If it didn't work, then at that point, my only choice would have been, oh Duncan, let me try to get it, you know, doing something that would have been more disruptive and I probably wouldn't have done that. But in this case, it was a small adjustment that I felt would make a big difference for me.

Most of your podcast guests probably wouldn't be bothered by it. Or they wouldn't have, they wouldn't say anything about it. Maybe they, for whatever reason, I like, I'm this, I'm this, I err on the wrong side of the thing is I'll just let things go that I should fix. And how, when I look at it, I'll just think, what are, why wouldn't you fix that? There's no reason not to like, make an adjustment here. I mean, I really like, you know, I have highly effective, I guess is the word for it, friends and they just adjust, you know what I mean?

They stop everything, they adjust and they get, they tune things in and, and whenever they've done that, I've never felt like, God, you're, what's going on with you? It's always like, holy shit, I got to start doing that more. Look at how they're grabbing control. They're like actual wizards, you know, not like, like imaginary. I'm going to cast a spell in my mind. They're directly interacting with matter and shifting it around to make it so that it conforms to their idea of harmony and balance.

Isn't that health? But you know, I, this, this hits upon something I've been wondering about. And by the way, I still haven't answered your question about psychedelics and death. And I do want to get to that, but this is, this is fascinating to me. And I have a question for you. Is I've sometimes wondered if the distinction you and I are talking about kind of, let's call it over controlling or, or Pensity to control versus propensity to, to not control to allow, to let go is kind of defines the difference between OCD and depression where

I think of O, if you think about fight and flight and freeze, OCD to me is very much, it's a fight thing. I'm going to fix this. I'm going to change this. I'm going to get this right and depression. And I, I've never experienced clinical depression the way you have, but I wonder if is it more of a, a flight or perhaps freeze thing and less of a fight thing more of like, well, I'm just not going to bother changing that until you freeze.

It's like, I would say, well, from my own experience, it's like you're run, you're running into quicksand or something. You know, so it's like fly. I'm going to like isolate and then like going to slow motion. And then that's kind of what it's like. So definitely fight no way. That's a cool distinction. Yeah.

I wouldn't call it a fight, but you know, anytime with when, when, with when, not when I catch it in ice and I do like fight, you know, and you didn't do the opposite. It's like fight against it. Yeah. I just don't like it because it's going to tell you lay in bed, isolate, don't do anything, blame yourself. You stay on your fucking phone all the time. It's going to tell you literally everything to do that will not help you and like creates

the feedback loop that gets you into deeper and deeper bits. So if you just, if you listen to it and then reverse that, okay, I'll, then I'm going to like read in bed. Oh, okay. I'm going to like get up early even though I don't want to. Oh, all right. You don't want to fuck it. Exercise.

I'll go exercise and it feels like shit. You, it's like, you know, it's like someone turned the gravity on earth up. You know what I mean? So it's like all of it, but then I have, I don't, but I can imagine. Yeah. It's, it is such a distinction. No, that's a great distinction. I'm just underlining that distinction because it's brilliant.

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Don't forget to use our URL to let them know we sent you. Loan amounts will be determined based on your credit income and certain other information provided on your loan application. Go to Upstart.com slash Duncan. Pull that stinking doom bird off of your metaphysical neck. Get out of debt with Upstart. As you were saying, though, the running in quicksand, I actually think that applies to OCD2, where I wonder if both conditions, depression and OCD, ultimately come to rest in a place

of freeze. But for OCD, it's fighting. I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to get this right. For me, a lot of it is decision making. We've talked about that in the past. We could talk more about it, but all forms of OCD, it's the mantra of OCD is get this

right. Or not right. Get this perfect. Right? It equals perfect. You're working and working. I say working, a lot of it is just in my head, but it's trying to figure out exactly how to do it.

But of course, ultimately, it fails. You can't reach a state of perfect control. That's when, for me, I can come into this freeze point where I'm just totally paralyzed because I can't accept the way things are. But I'm realizing more and more that I can't get them exactly the way I want. And it sounds like for you, it's the flight that eventually leads to the freeze. Because in both cases are strategies. Your strategy and my strategy for, I would say, avoiding fear and loss, sadness.

They fail. They don't work. And we reached that point where that is undeniable. And then that kicks in this, as you said, this sort of cycle where the longer you're in bed, the harder it is to get out of bed. Yeah. And this is why not to keep harping on it, making the adjustment you just made. It's so cool.

I don't mean to harp on it, man, but I think people who are neurodivergent are, and I'm sorry I'm saying it like that. I like that. Let's come up. Can we come up with a better trap between you and me? I grew up with mental illness. My mom was a psychologist. I'm old.

I don't like neurodivergent because it gives people a break because the reason I like the term is, it's like, look, maybe you're not ill. Maybe it's just the way that your computer, the apps you're running, don't match default reality. That doesn't mean you're sick. You're just not running the same operating system. But the illness can be liberating too, I have to say. I was going through a rough OCD crisis.

For me, it happens in sort of cyclical crises. Not cyclical in the sense of someone who's bipolar, but there's ... And the overall trajectory of my OCD has gotten dramatically better over the past decade. But I still hit rough patches, and then I come out of them and I feel often a great deal of freedom on the other side, and I feel like, wow, okay, I see this so clearly, I'm never falling into that shit again. Of course, I recognize that thought is in itself almost part of the cycle. There's an element of humility that comes over a lifetime of living with this for being

like, well, I probably am going to fall into that again at some point, but right now, I'm going to relish the freedom I feel and relish it while I can. But the idea, I was in a rough cycle, this was a few years ago, and I had a bunch of promising career things that I just wasn't fucking following up on. I just wasn't doing this stuff because I was so mired in OCD for a week or longer, and I was talking to a friend who also has OCD, and he said, well, you're just sick, Adam. If you had the flu, you wouldn't be beating yourself up because, oh, man, I've been in bed with the flu in a temperature of 104 for a week.

You're sick right now. Yeah, you're not going to be doing much else. You're sick. I like that. When someone has the flu, you're not like your health divergent. Just be sick forever. Yeah, I get it. I think maybe the idea is neurodivergent as a broad category, just a label that's clearly

the way, even though divergent might not even be the right word, there's OCD and depression are fairly common, so I didn't know if the well-represented in the population might be divergent. I know what you mean because right now, even though I've been coughing like I'm an award, I'm on the other side of this damn thing. I know what you mean. I know what's waiting for me is health. Every day, I feel a little better, and it wasn't even that bad, but still, at some point,

I'm going to wake up and be like, ah, I did it, and I beat it, and that's cool. I get it. I think it's a good term for people who've been feeling ashamed, because a lot of people feel ashamed that they're not running the same OS as other people, so they have a lot of guilt and shame about it. And I don't love the term mental illness either. I think it can be useful looking at it both ways as, yeah, there is some different wiring or, yeah, probably some different wiring as well as maybe some early age experiences,

for whatever reason, we've been shaped in a certain way, nature or nurture or some combination thereof, and that's neither good nor bad. And certainly, there's all these evolutionary biology theories that, yeah, you want some people in the tribe who are depressed, who are sitting around in the cave when food is scarce and it's cold out and conserving energy, and you want some people in the tribe who are looking in the bushes for the ninth time in a row being like, are we sure there's not a tiger in this bush? Let me just check for a tenth time.

So for the viability of the community, of the tribe, it makes sense to have people who are divergent in their ways of viewing and interacting with the world. So yeah, I think there's validity in both views, but I think it can also be liberating to be like, yeah, I'm going through something right now that I can't directly control the same way you can't directly control your cough, you know, I can't directly control my depression, my OCD, whatever it is. And I'm going to let myself off the hook because I didn't choose this. And I, yeah, this is an experience I'm having that will, it will pass.

I don't know exactly when, but for now I'm going to, yeah, not compound it by beating myself up over it. You get to, because I think like a lot of, for a lot of people dealing with these sorts of things, a lot of the dealing with it is thinking about things you did in the past when you were in the midst of it and beating yourself up for it. You know what I mean? Like I look back at like times that I was just on a mattress on the floor, not just like telling people, I can't make it, but just not showing up, turning the, just, you know

what I mean? And I, if I'm not careful, I'll look back at that and be like, God, what the fuck, man? What? You don't respect your friends. Why would you, why would you do that? And, and, and, but then I have to remind myself you did that because you were, you were fucking depressed and you weren't treating it at all. That's why you did that.

Like it's not like you, it's not like you're like, boy, what's better than laying on, a stinky mattress in a apartment that doesn't have AC in the middle of summer for a few days? What's better than that? Oh, why would I want to go to have a drink with my fucking friends when I could do this joy, joyful thing? You know, it's like you're sick. That's why you're doing it.

So I think it's, you know, we always have to keep reminding ourselves of that. If I, that's been one of the ways I've sort of untangled a lot of my, you know, guilt is just looking back at me like you were, you were depressed. Also when some people who that I have like, like labeled in a negative way in retrospect, I look back and I'm like, oh, they were fucking depressed, man. They were doing the best they could. They were just doing the best they could. Like they were like the fact they were able to eat was probably an amazing thing for them

in those times. You know, I, I, it's just like, yeah. So for me, I always am trying to work on the compassion with myself and other people in that regard. Cause right, we don't, you don't know when someone's being an asshole, you don't know what's going on, going on in there, like behind it all, you know, like they could be super sick. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, those two go together. I mean, for, for me, self compassion and compassion towards others, I, I heard it said, I don't remember by whom, but this idea of the way. The way we talk to others is the way we talk to ourselves. But I'd actually take that further in that I generally am, I mean, I've gotten, there's been a lot of growth in this area for me, but in general, I talk to myself much more harshly than I talk to other people.

And but that was helpful for me when I have met someone who's just a really harsh asshole to be like, man, like, all right, it sucks dealing with this person at this comedy club, you know, this book or for an hour, but I feel bad for this dude cause he's in there 24 seven for, you know, that's like the way he's talking to me, that there's no way someone who talks to other people in an abusive way is in their own head, you know, very gentle and loving towards themselves. And then you go back further, where did that come from? Well, he didn't make a conscious choice to be that way.

Almost certainly there's, there's trauma, there's loss, there's, there's deep pain. And this is this person's adaptation. They're a way that they unconsciously chose probably at an early age to feel safe in the world and what a horribly high price they're paying for it. And I can have compassion for them because I've paid a very horribly high price at times for my own strategies to protect myself. Oh God, not me. You know, I've never said what's interesting.

One of the things that many things is interesting about me is I've never said anything mean to anyone. It's not yet, but actually that's on your Wikipedia page. Never once. God, it's such a high price. I mean, like in, in Buddhism, you know, it's one of the big anger is like one of the top don't do it. And, you know, I've been looking into just out of curiosity into Islam and same, obviously

it's like, it's a universal reality, which is like most of the time being shitty with someone is not going to do anything to make your life situation better. Most of the time, there's exceptions. Most of the time, though, it's not going to do anything. Sometimes you need to stick up for yourself, though, again, we're back to the figuring out one for the line. Where's the line? But I think this, but we're not really back to line because I think you and I, what we're

both, I mean, I don't know exactly what you're thinking, but what I'm thinking of these sort of examples are where it clearly is not helpful to be an abusive asshole for that person or the other person. But it's, it's, you know, it's an addiction, it's a strategy, which is really what addictions are, are strategies that ultimately have ceased to serve us, but also do serve us in the very, very short term. I mean, this is an important point that I think people with OCD, and I'm guessing depression and other neurodivergence slash mental illness is often miss, is people with OCD will be

like, well, I don't know why I do this, you know, but there is a payoff. There is, you know, when I'm trying to get it right, I'm trying to get it right, and I feel like I have gotten it right, or even maybe I got it right, there's, there's some dopamine flow in those moments. It may only last for 10 seconds. Yeah. And I'm guessing for you, there is probably, you know, when you're feeling that depression starting to lay heavily on you, and the alarm goes off, and you're like, no, you know what,

I'm just going to turn over and pull the covers over my head. I'm guessing not all the time, but some of the time there's at least a few seconds of comfort in that moment, it feels better to stay in bed and to get out of bed. Oh God, yeah. It's all fucking warm and the most infernal warm. It's like, it's like, if, if somebody like asked the most evil thing in the universe to try to synthesize coziness, you know what I mean? It's like, here you are, is this what you meant?

No. Be careful what you wish for. That's not what I fucking meant. But, but it, I know what you mean, but you'd also be like, but it's kind of close. I mean, yeah, it just didn't fold me in your tentacles, oh dark lord. I mean your tentacles, that should, that should be a t-shirt. I feel like, but the, you know, the, again, like I love having these conversations. Anytime I get to have them with people are open about neurodivergent slash mental illness,

it's like, it's always very liberating for me. I know other people when they hear it too, they're like, oh fuck, right. Because that is another thing I think we, it's good to like sort it all out, you know, like what you've learned from the particular thing, because in a weird way, like we are all kind of explorers in that regard, you know, we're all in our own bushwhacking through our own terrain and anytime we figure something out, that's a way to, you know, treat it or some like way to like mitigate it at least, it's really good to share it with others, you know, because I think the assumption is that it's all, it's all been figured out

or, you know, there's a few pathways to deal with it, but actually I think it hasn't. We all have stuff to offer, but you know, with whatever it may be like with eight, like take ADHD for example, another of my diagnoses. I remember when I first, I didn't know you had that one in the quiver, another, I remember getting it, I remember they just gave me a sheet and it was like, check which of these apply to you. And it was like being with a psychic, you know what I mean? This was for an ADHD like a questionnaire or something, yeah, like check, check, check,

check. And it was so wonderful because it's like, Oh, right. These were all things that I thought, you know, I'm, I'm just the guy who can't clean. I'm the guy who can't clean his room. I'm the guy who I'm the guy who loses his keys. I'm the guy who procrastinates. That's just what, you know, it's my kid, but it's like, no, that actually is it. You're not that guy.

That's part of who you are, but that's not you. That's just part of like the, what you're dealing with people to get back into the payoff. People with ADHD, they procrastinate. As it was described, explained to me, they procrastinate because if you can successfully procrastinate long enough to the point where you are in a 100% full blown anxiety attack from the procrastination, your brain will start giving you stress chemicals. Those stress chemicals will produce the focus that you were somehow knowing that you needed. And so, so that's, so the night before the thing is due, suddenly you're like, holy shit.

And now you're like, Oh, okay, I can get it all done. You get it done. And then the other payoff is the burst of relief you get from getting the thing done. But this is like one of the qualities. A lot of people with ADHD become comedians, become paramedics, get into like weird high risk things, because if there's a lot of pressure in, then they can sort of induce what common ADHD medications are trying to do. But it's just the worst way.

It's like punching your brain, you know, to try to get it to squeeze out just a droplet of something that apparently most people's brain just naturally make. This was not your point. But as you're talking, so I've had a few friends who know me well, who have been like, Yeah, I think you should get checked out for ADHD. And as you're describing it, like, Yeah, I mean, I know this isn't the, the, the sole diagnostic criteria, but yeah, I can't clean my room. I can't find my keys.

And I certainly fall into this cycle where I have, I have a book chapter that was, that was due what's two days ago. And I haven't done it yet. And I know two days ago, we both had a chapter, and I've known about this for months and I've known, and it's part of it is the person I'm doing the book chapter for is an understanding person. So it's, but it's like, yeah. I think that's what it is.

If it was like someone less understanding, then that those chemicals would have kicked in, you know, two nights ago at 1130 p.m. But, but it's like my brain is still like, no, no, no, you know, we're going to do this tomorrow. But, but yeah, man, I, I, my purpose, my, my, you know, in the goal in doing your podcast is not come up with new diagnoses for myself, but that is one that I think I'm going to explore with a professional because I, yeah, it's good to get it checked out. You never know.

It could be so many other things too. Like, who knows, it could just be a fucking sucks to write. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it could just be like, it's hard to write. And that's also, I don't like doing hard shit. Who, who knew? Yeah.

It's like, we would rather do, you know, that this is like, I just ordered, God, I should have done it because I've been so perpetually disappointed by things I've ordered from Instagram. I've only ordered like one, actually one thing and every two things, an ear cleaner, garbage, but they made it look like it was going to like just pull like a, just a huge beautiful balls of wax out of your ear. And it was late. So I'm just like, some, you know, you're thinking like, God, that's what I need.

That'll make everything better. And then weirdly, the same year I got it, I fell for another ear scam. Wait, we're going to be targeting you for your scams from now on. This is, this is your legacy for the rest of your life. I must have said something that they picked up on like, I got filthy ears. And all of a sudden it's just ear bullshit. But like one of the things was one of those scopes. So you stick the thing in your ear and now you can look in there and let's see all this

is like an app. Do you look on your phone? It was an app. Wow. That one never even fucking came. I paid for it. I didn't even fucking show up. So this thing is like, essentially a typewriter emulator.

So it's like a portable word processor that doesn't go on the internet. So you can go because like my studio is not a good writing studio. There's too many cool gadgets for me to fuck around with and like and I can justify it by saying like, well, maybe this will be in an intro for a podcast. Yeah. And then I end up not writing. So I love, I've loved your musical intros though, man. I have to say that.

Thank you. Not to reinforce your, your procrastinating, but this also brings up, let's take a slight right turn here. One of the things I had a therapist who would say like, yeah, you know, procrastination is also, to some extent, that's a value judgment to say you're procrastinating. I mean, he'd say like, a lot of my best ideas have come when I've been procrastinating. So yeah, I mean, if you're using you creating music as procrastination, like that, that to me adds a unique element to your art, to your creativity.

Well, I love the angle. I did have a method actually, because I realized that like I have a hierarchy of things that I would like to do or not do. And so I, somewhere at the top of the list, I don't want to work out. So I would bring a notebook to the gym. And then I would find myself writing because I, I was there to work out. And so I procrastinate the working out by writing. So yeah, you know what I mean?

Like I, you could, I was like hacking myself because there's a theory about this that basically Yeah. Well, that's, yes. I, I dated a psychologist who also struggled with procrastination. She would use essentially, it sounds like the same technique where, so she really had to, she had to write a research paper. She really, really didn't want to do it. She would find something she didn't want to do even more than that.

And therefore write that research paper. It worked for her. It works. Yeah. I'm telling you, it works. Like you just want to distract yourself from the next thing, from the next thing. It's a highly, highly, it's like one of. I was so thrilled when I realized what was happening, but then I actually, I wanted to

work out. So that was the problem. So I got to find something I want, want to do less than work out. You really don't want to do. Yeah. Interesting. Can you talk about your book at all? Oh, it's not my book.

I'm, I'm, I'm writing a chapter for, yeah, I think I can talk about it. It's not, I mean, it's obviously, I won't mention names, but it is a book about psychedelics and the future of humanity. That's someone who I have a great deal of respect for in the field has, is putting together. And I guess I can, like the other contributors are, you know, A-list people like, like Dennis McKenna, psychedelic A-list people. And I was flattered. He asked me to write about psychedelics and humor, because I think that's such rich territory.

I mean, to, yeah, there's, there are so many parallels. The surrender of psychedelics, the surrender of laughter, the humility that comes from both laughter and the psychedelic experience, the awe. So anyway, it's, I'm, I'm writing a, you know, it's a short, you know, underword chapter about psychedelics and humor, which is something I want to do. It's, it'll be like, I, I have a lot to say about the topic, but yet the fact that I have this deadline. And of course, yeah, writing always puts on, for me, there's a, a level of, it can trigger

the perfectionism to a unique degree. One of the liberating things about live performance I've always found as an obsessive perfectionist. And I don't know if this has been your experience is when I'm on stage, things don't always go the way I want them to go, but I got a role with it. You know, I can't stop a performance and be like, oh, you know, you know what, wait, I, I delivered that punchline wrong. Everyone just hold on one second. Let me get back into character and let me do that again.

So you just kind of, the performance, it, it rolls by at the end, I may be happy with how it went. I may be unhappy. Usually I'm somewhere in between, but it's over. Whereas if it's something on the page, I can write and rewrite and re rewrite. And I saw this with, I have this, this, well, it was going to be a psychedelic news show called the trip report. It, it may just be one episode.

The first episode, it was, so originally it was, I was, That's what you sent me. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Oh, thanks man. Yeah. People seemed to like it.

And I, I, so originally it was a project involving a bunch of people. It was actually Hamilton Morris and I were co-anchors. So it's a psychedelic news show, but sort of comedic in the, in the vein of kind of, you know, last week tonight with John's, John Oliver would be the closest sort of analog. So originally it was Hamilton and I as co-anchors, I had a friend, really brilliant director named Kurt Benton and we're directing it. And then the pandemic and all the shit happened. And so I wound up doing it entirely on my own.

And it was an OCD perfectionism rabbit hole. I did like a hundred takes of the footage. I would edit and re-edit and re-edit. And so, and, and writing prose also can hold that, that danger for me where, you know, you can always, you can always do another edit, you can always do another rewrite. Whereas on stage it's over. The audience left. You can't, you know.

Yes. And this is, well, this is like, you know, this is what I do love about like hardcore deadlines, like, like truly unavoidable deadlines, like, you know, I got to get a podcast out this week. I have to. Like it's like, I have to do it. Or like obligate, like I have obligations to get it out that, that my whole life will get fucked up if I don't.

So I have to get it out. That cures, that cures the problem you're talking about because, you know, the reason I was late for this is because I've been working on a cover of Radiohead's Creep with Big Bird, a deep fake of Big Bird singing it. Wow. And it's like, I have to get it out today. You know what I mean? Like, so it's like, it isn't, is it perfect?

Fuck no. It's not perfect. Why do you have to get it out today? Because I want to put it on the intro of this podcast. Oh, okay. So, so, so I love that because it stops, it stops, it like stops the thing that makes you just want to adjust and change and adjust and change and fix. This is like, when you hear about Brian Eno's awesome rules about making music, which apply

to writing, comedy and everything else. I don't know them. Oh, check it out. It's like, let me see if I can find some of them. But it completely is a, you're like it, you could extrapolate it into anything creative, but let me see if I can find a few of them. I think they have cards where you can, here's one, Eno's first rule was, honor thy error as a hidden intention.

Others included use non-musicians and tape your mouth. It's called oblique strategies, but they're, they're, they're wonderful because they sort of impose limitation. And sometimes, especially in making stuff, the problem is lack of limitation, not limitation. The problem is no certain boundaries, right? Absolutely. And that's what I found with this trip report thing, where it was just me, I had all these different ideas and it was, yeah, it could go in any number of directions.

And there's, I, I was, I have my own podcast called Not Therapy, where a friend of mine who's a psychiatrist does sort of therapy on me, but we talked about psychedelics, relationships, all that stuff. And he, I was talking about this issue where, especially with the pandemic, when all of my external responsibilities in terms of live performances evaporated and I was having a lot of trouble, uh, motivating, and he said, you know, work will make you free. And I was like, oh, that's a great point. And he's like, actually, that was, that was Nazi propaganda.

That was, that was on the gates over the entrance to like, but, but there's something to that, you know, having, having obligation. It's this paradox where obligation confers freedom to a degree. Obviously, you can be completely hamstrung by obligation, but the other end of the spectrum, which is honestly dunking where I find myself now, and it's, it's not an optimal place for me where there's no obligation or almost no obligation can be, particularly for someone with OCD who wants to figure out the perfect thing to do and the perfect timing. But I think for anyone can be incredibly paralyzing, incredibly paralyzing.

Yeah. You need to find your, like you have to have a, because you're, you're obviously people listening can hear how brilliant you are. You just, you need like that, like, and part of being as smart as you are, I would imagine is you have this, you know, you could put anything you want to figure out, you could figure it out, it might take some time, but you can figure it, meaning you kind of know you can do like all the jobs. And well, how do you, you're, you're like an exemplar for this for me in that you, you

do podcasts, you do live performance, you do fucking music and your music is great, man. Like, I remember the first time I think I heard you play was when it might have been the last time we did the podcast when I was at your place in LA and you were hooking up all these crazy modular synths. Yeah. Yeah. I'd never seen shit like that in real life. And well, I'm learning, but yeah, but though, but you're, I mean, you're, you're making

like pop songs now and you did that in the Midnight Gospel. I mean, let's talk about that. That's, to me, that is, I mean, I just have the utmost admiration for, for what you created, because it's something that it kind of reminds me of art. The first time I really started to get into poetry was around the time I really got into psychedelics. And I was, I had a few weeks at this beach house and I brought Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass with me.

I don't know if you've ever gotten into it, but it was, yeah. And I think I was even sober, but I was reading it and I had this epiphany where I was like, oh, Walt Whitman is not writing in this at that time, totally pioneering free verse form because he was like, hey, I want to do free verse poetry. No. He had certain ideas and emotions he wanted to express and that form was necessary to express them. He couldn't do it in, in sonnets.

He couldn't do it in prose. He couldn't do it by standing on a soapbox and, you know, in, in, in Times Square. This was the form followed the, the content, the emotion. And that's what I get from Midnight Gospel where you and, and Ward, and I'm obviously a lot of other creative people are involved to, I don't know, but you created something completely unique, not to me for the sake of just like, let's do something unique. But because this was the way to express something that you wanted to express. And what blows my mind even more is it started with something that wasn't created for that

form. It started with these podcast audios. So. Right. Well, it was, you know what, to get back to the trip report and like that thing where you realize you're thwarted by wanting to do everything yourself, that, you know, it was really cool to work with Pendleton because he's a genius when it comes to collaboration. And from, you know, he just, I've never encountered anyone, anyone who is that good at getting

gluing people together. And he encouraged me to, to do those songs, you know, like I wouldn't have done it. Really? If it, if like there, if there'd been the slightest wintz from him or anything like that, I wouldn't have done it. So that's why collaboration is great. It's, you know, it's when you find someone you really vibe with, because then from that, you don't have to do everything and you need someone you can lean into too, that you can

trust. You know that you, you know, someone you're like, okay, I might not think that that idea is good, but I think you're good. And that idea came from you. And you know what I mean? So I'm going to trust. Yeah. And that's going to, whatever it form, it looks like now, I might not understand, but

it's going to grow into something great with a trip report thing I see and what you sent me. Okay. This is trying to do it yourself. Like, you know, you and Hamilton would be freaking hilarious together, man. That is a perfect. And also if you look at the landscape right now, what a timely, what a timely moment to make a show like that, because you can, like you have things backing you up that are massive

corporations who are wanting to cash in on this stuff and massive amounts of money being dropped into. I'm sorry to say cash in, but I mean, we're fucking pharmaceutical companies, you know, it's not like, right. Absolutely. I mean, we have this major trial of psilocybin that's happening. I wasn't referring to the MDMA thing. I've met Doblin and there's a legitimate love in him for people like he, so I wasn't, I

wanted to, my friends out there, I want to seem like I'm like sub-tweeting or some bullshit, but it's like the, I think it's a, whatever path gets us to a psychedelic future where the prohibition is over and the taboo is lifted. I'm pretty okay with that path for better, for worse, you know, so that's my feeling. But what a great time to have a show like that. I mean, like if you had to, if you, you're saying this would be like a talk, like an actual talk show, studio talk show, you would have guests and then just, you know, sort of, you know, do a monologue upfront about the state of things as they are in the news,

I guess. Yeah. That, that was, that was the original vision and I may, I may revisit it, but I put out this episode and, you know, it's tough, first of all, to get someone to watch something that's 10 minutes long. A good friend pointed this out where he's like, yeah, if I don't already have confidence in what I'm going to see, meaning I don't know the person. If someone's not famous, if I'm not a fan of theirs and I see a 10 minute video, I'm

probably not going to press play. If I do press play, if they don't suck me in in 30 seconds, I'm stopping. And this whole thing, I crafted, it has a whole arc to it. And so this is all to say that, listen, if I'd put it up, I put it about a month ago and it had gotten a million views, then I'd be like, yeah, I'm doing more of these. But the amount of time I put into the number of people it reached has made me reevaluate that. And part of that, of course, it says an ego thing, but part of it is also I have a limited

amount of time on this earth. Maybe we don't know, as we were saying at the beginning of the podcast, but presumably. And so I want to, for a variety of selfless and selfish and egotistical and altruistic reasons, I want my work to reach more people. And so it feels like the sort of ratio of time put into number of people reached. This may not be the vehicle I want to do it in. But you just need to shrink it down. That's all.

That's one possibility is just kind of streamlining it because there are sketches and those took a lot of time. Another possibility is partnering with people and organizations who can put more resources behind it. Yeah, I mean, I like and I like the idea of psychedelic news one, because I think it's just the most interesting thing happening. What we're seeing this huge shift in acceptance, public and legal and medical acceptance of psychedelics happening so rapidly.

Yeah, you know, albeit after, you know, maps was started 30 something years ago. So it's been this slow, slow build, but it's like that, you know, with the stock people say hockey stick, there you go. Yeah, like suddenly now we're in this accelerated exponential growth phase. So it's and we're seeing all these competing factions. The people are like, yeah, this is this is indigenous medicine, man. This has to be available for free. And then people, you know, like compass pathways, we're trying to adopt pretty aggressive patent

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And I truly thank blue chew for sponsoring this podcast and giving me massive, glorious, pulsating erections. Now back to the podcast. And we're seeing all these competing factions that people are like, yeah, this is Indigenous medicine, man. This has to be available for free. And then people like Compass Pathways who are trying to adopt pretty aggressive patent strategies. And then all of that against the bigger context of bringing it back to what you and I were talking

about earlier, what the fuck are these experiences? This is to me, this is as someone who has been on a litany of psychiatric medications. I've been off for 15 years, but I was on all the SSRIs, a typical antipsychotics, all that stuff. This is a very different experience than psychedelic. This is not, that's not a good analog to, you know, the outcomes we're going for in terms of relief from depression and OCD may be similar, but the, you can't discount. And this is sort of a thrust of the first episode that I put out of the trip report, is the psychedelic experience itself is something that has to be reckoned with

and grappled with in a unique way, because it is a unique experience. Oh, amen to that. And it weirdly mirrors the, what they're now calling UAPs, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, but it weirdly mirrors that in the sense that both the psychedelics experience and, like, anyone who, like, talks about seeing something up in the sky, in front of the wrong audience, both stories are met with, like, an eye roll. Both are, you know, like, I've had conversations with people who have said, yeah, but you were high, like, because I was high, it didn't count.

And so this, this, like, I understand why people say that, because the propaganda machine gotten to everyone's head, that you're breaking your brain with these substances rather than amplifying, refining, whatever word you want to use, or creating a sort of anomalous kind of focus that is not a malfunction, but is just, you know, sort of a temporary, I don't want to use, like, machine terms that are now pretty antiquated, but temporarily rewiring your nervous system for the positive. You know, and so, yeah, I agree with you, man, that, that, that, the, that's the main stigma that I would love to see lifted, where the hierarchies that we now seem to apply to waking consciousness, where if you are, you know, drinking coffee in the morning,

totally normal, totally normal. If you're getting stoned in the morning, whoa, what's going on with you, man, you're getting high in the morning. And some of it I get, like, you know, if you're waking up and drinking tequila, you know what I mean? Like, that's going to be maybe once a summer or something like that. But in general, I do get why, but I'm just saying, like, this fucking sacred profane thing, where the sober mind state is this great holy sacred place, and anything that goes away from that, that isn't prescribed by a doctor, or isn't at the right time of culturally at the right time of day, is an indication that something's going wrong with you. I look forward to when that goes bye bye. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and you were,

you were drawing an analogy with UAPs is the current term, right? And I assume what you were seeing with the analogy is that, yeah, with the wrong crowd, you could get eye rolls, but also what we're seeing very quickly happening with psychedelics and UAPs is more and more people are like, oh, oh, wow, I always dismiss this, but maybe there's something here. Yeah. I mean, look, as someone who loves psychedelics and UFOs, it's like, it's hard for me not to just think like, oh, yeah, this is definitely a dream, or it's something I like programmed before I was born. So it's like really like towards the end of your life, you're like, all right, let's get psychedelics legal and reveal there's UFOs all the same fucking time. You mean the best time

in human history? Like that's, that is actually happening. And it's such a wonderful, wonderful thing to me, but the UFO thing is exciting to me, but, but it's a little, it's exciting as an, it's an entertainment, it's entertainment, and it's thrilling, but the psychedelic universe is a little more, is a little closer to home because I have two, two children, and I don't want them to grow up in a prohibition. I don't want them to grow up in an anti science time period where their garbage facts are being thrown at them about anything, especially things that have the potential to allow them to, you know, elevate their consciousness when they're old enough, you know, when their brain is like finished developing mid twenties out of the house.

But there is a, there is a school of thought that says expose kids to the stuff earlier, you know, and certainly a lot of indigenous cultures, it is more of a rite of passage thing. Nothing would encourage you to, encourage you to dose your kids at age nine. I never would. But I, I get, but, but no, like, I think the problem with that is like culturally we're not there yet. I think it is, it's certainly we are there when it comes to giving all the very psychiatric medications we give children without even thinking about it. But when we're, for better or for worse, we're not going to be there for another 50 years. But I do 20 years maybe. But I do think, who knows, it's accelerating so much. I mean, I know. Yeah. But, but yeah, it is, we're not there.

No, we're not there yet. And we don't, we don't, we don't, in the, why are we not there yet? One of the reasons is because the way the West understands things is through the quantification, the data sets, an accepted, rigorous way of discerning. This is what's true. This isn't what's true. Confidence intervals, statistical significance, all of it. And this is, this is like saved a lot of lives. And we need it because otherwise it's like, you know, you get thalamite, you know, you get like things can fuck up. So I think one of the reasons we're not there yet, the reason why if you bring your child to a psychiatrist for some behavior disorder, there, there is a chance that the psychiatrist will write a prescription for something that is going to radically alter the

way your child's brain works. And that's because there's data backing it up. Because lots of money got put into the studies. I was going to say the data itself is somewhat suspect in that. I mean, this is a digression. Like with, well, the whole thing with SSRIs, where there was this Paxil, which I was on for many years. I was on that starting at age 18 for many years, high dose Paxil and SSRI. And it turned out it was implicated in juvenile suicide. Kids, teenagers were more likely to commit suicide, not massively more likely. But if you take a drug and it's being prescribed to hundreds of thousands or millions of people, there's a, you know, discernible number of people who killed themselves who probably wouldn't have. And the drug company,

I think it was GlaxoSmithKline. I could be wrong about that. But whatever the drug company was, they had evidence of this and they suppressed it. And it turned out, you know, so many of these stories, I feel like we don't find out about this one. We did. There were lawsuits. Anyway, as part of the lawsuit settlement, they had to disclose all of the clinical trial data for Paxil. And it turned out, I don't remember the exact numbers, but there was something like 48 clinical trials that had been published for Paxil in support of it being approved by the FDA. And all 48 showed a positive benefit from Paxil. But pursuant to this lawsuit, they had to disclose the unpublished trials. And it was one fewer trials, like 47 unpublished trials

that showed no benefit, or in some case showed harms, meaning people on this did not do better, and in some cases did worse than the placebo. I thought you had to publish all the trials. You don't have to publish all the... No, no, it's fucking insane. There's a guy named Ben Goldaker in the UK who has this book called Bad Farmer about this. And now he's, he has started this nonprofit that's dedicated to changing this. And they have changed it. I think in the UK, it may be being changed in the US, but no, this is insane, Duncan. Clinical trial data is considered proprietary business information. That's a fucking loophole, isn't it? What a loophole! So the psychiatrist drawing on the data saying that your nine-year-old should be on cerakwill. Yeah, there is data, but who knows

what others trials say. Ooh, don't put nine-year-olds on cerakwill. They're only seeing what the company that's selling the stuff wants them to see. And this comes back to things like regulatory capture, people on the FDA being former drug company executives. And listen, this is not my, you know, there's other people who know a lot more about this, but yeah, it's been a massive problem where thankfully there's more awareness of it now. And again, I think there certainly is a movement to change it in this country, whether it's not it's succeeded as well as in other countries. Well, thank you for telling me about that. I'm going to revise my thinking when it comes to what I understood as a rigorous and very important methodology that the FDA uses to determine

this thing from that thing. I've got to revise. That might be a little naive of me to think that. And the FDA, to be clear, they do use a fairly rigorous methodology, but they're dependent on essentially, unless if this has changed recently, drug companies deciding what stuff gets published and doesn't get published. They're not doing the studies. So it's like the FDA is it is depending on well, look, I don't look that's great to that's great to know I'm going to I'm going to jump into it. But there's a really good book called Anatomy of an Epidemic by I believe it's Robert Whitaker that talks about all this stuff and makes a pretty compelling case that most psychiatric medications and he used to work for drug companies. Most psychiatric medications

not only don't help the conditions they purport to help but over the long term may actually worsen it. And he was a controversial figure to to their credit, the psychiatry community profession has actually started to embrace him. He gave a keynote address at an American Psychiatric Conference recently. So there is more and more of an acknowledgement that psychiatric medications to be clear, they are lifesaver for some people. And if someone is listening to this is on psychiatric medications and feels they help them keep taking them. And if you don't feel they help you still keep taking them until you consult with someone because getting off the stuff can cause all sorts of challenges too. But but yeah, there's you know, we don't have a

picture of the efficacy and long term. The long term outcome is the other big question because the clinical trials to approve this stuff, you're typically looking at like eight weeks, 10 weeks. I don't know anyone who's been on Paxil for eight or 10 weeks, people are on this stuff for eight or 10 years. I was on SSRIs for 15 years, right? Yeah, no trial data whatsoever for that. It's impossible to get for some of this stuff because it's relatively new and it hasn't and who's going to fund it? The drug companies have no incentive in funding it once it's been approved. Right. They have no incentive in funding this very expensive long term follow up that may show that it's not that effective. Well, I mean, I think this is clearly one of the problems of psilocybin and

other psychedelics. If you want to have a if you want to make a lot of money, because it's not the subscription model, right? You know what I mean? Like what are you going to do? Like tell someone they need to take psilocybin every day, like they do antidepressants. I mean, I if they do do that, that'll be a great day for me when I bring that prescription to the fucking pharmacy. I got to take it every day. Take an eighth every day in the morning. Wonderful. But but I isn't that like, isn't this one of the challenges that the problem is, is like, okay, we have shown that psilocybin has the effect of is even better at helping people with endogenous depressions than some addiction than like the currently prescribable stuff. But the problem

is they don't need a lot of doses. You know, this is the kind of thing where some people will have a profile, not a therapeutic trip. It's important to make that distinction. But I mean, I've known people who have had a really profound mushroom trip or LSD trip, and they just stop drinking, or they just stop eating meat, or they just stop. You know what I mean? They just stop. They don't want to do it anymore. And it and it and it seems to last for a long time. Not everybody, but so how do you make money off of that? Yeah, yeah, that that that has been one of the challenges. And that's why maps has has adopted this model of a public benefit corporation, where basically their stuff is available freely. It's a little more complicated than that. But there. But now

we're seeing all these for profit companies coming in. And yeah, and the idea is, what are you actually patenting? I mean, some companies like compass pathways has been granted a patent on psilocybin, not mushrooms, either specific formulation of psilocybin. But it's a fairly broad patent that caused a lot of concerns. Yeah, yeah, they were they were they were granted a patent for pump 360 their synthetic form of psilocybin, which there's nothing inherently unusual or even I would say immoral about being granted a patent on a synthetic version of naturally occurring psychedelic mean Albert Hoffman, the inventor of LSD, also filed the first patent for psilocybin synthetic psilocybin in I think 1958. So but the issue with compass

patent is that actually, they purported that this was a novel invention, their synthesis method. And it turns out they had taken a lot of stuff that was effectively in the public domain synthesis methods that were being used by nonprofits like hefter and use some in fact, some methods that Hoffman himself had pioneered. So one way to answer your question, Duncan is how do you make money? Well, you do these ridiculously aggressive patent strategies, so that you can essentially try to control something, not in its naturally occurring form, but in its medically sanctioned form, right? So that yeah, the government is not going to my insurance company is not going to underwrite the seven grams of mushrooms I want to take for a healing spiritual experience. No,

but they may underwrite a $3,000 psychedelic assisted treatment plan that uses compasses comp 360 and compass charges $500 for the 25 milligrams of psilocybin they administer in a in a pressed pill. Yeah, we'll see now this to me, this is where we run into like some really wonderfully controversial territory, which is okay. So then the answer is is you know, pure like legalization, acknowledging the recreational and also the fact that like you can't we if you go to a doctor, you go to a psychiatrist, a therapist, they you know, just because especially if you're using insurance, they have to report something to the insurance company to get paid. So diagnostic code,

it's not like hey, this guy just wants to see the face of God that doesn't no code for that yet. Blue Cross is not going to ante up for that. But that to me that that again, it does show how insane our culture is, which is there should be a code for they want to see the face of God. Oh, they you know, they feel like sort of entrenched in a non mystical identity state. And so they're hoping to upshift their consciousness. What's the code for that? You know, and then and then it should be accepted that like human beings are we're not just going like we're not medicine shouldn't just be for when you're sick, you know, like medicine or our definition of sickness should not be we just need to broaden our definition of what it means to be out of

harmony out of sync or even we need to bra or even the idea that like we want to aspire to greater states of joy, you know, that absolutely. That's that's where we're still in the, you know, we're in a very primitive state when it comes to medicine globally, I think. Absolutely. And I think yeah, I mean, I hold to the view, you know, the sort of Terrence McKenna view and other people have had it to that we co evolved. And I think I say this in the trip report, more or less, we co evolved with these compounds with these plants and fungi, hundreds of them throughout the planet that interact with the human nervous system in very specific ways that seem to be massively adaptive, not just for the individual that is people lead

more harmonious lives, healthier lives, but also for the community, those individuals are embedded in, they're more altruistic, they're more giving, they're more concerned about their neighbors, they're more concerned about the greater good. So I believe that we've we've cut ourselves off from these experiences and these plants and fungi that induce these experiences at great personal and collective costs. Absolutely. Yeah. But where's the code for that? Well, it's six, six, six. That's the fucking code. Six, six, six. Only drink. Six, six, six. I'm prescribing a pack of cigarettes to you, motherfucker. Like, but this is like, again, why and I understand, and especially now that you've explained, I'm glad we had this conversation,

man. I feel like I've got a little bit of a fool. Am I thinking about the current state of things when it comes to you fool? But, but still, I feel like whatever is normalizing this medicine, even if it is like temporarily satanic, it's still better than not normalizing it. It's still better. It's still going to balance out the Paxil and the SSRIs and all the other stuff. It's still going to produce an alternative. You know, just that alone, here's an alternative. Because, you know, my, my mom, when she was alive, this is the sort of thing that she wouldn't have looked into because she's, you know, depending on how old you are, your parents are probably pretty fucking programmed. And they're like deeply programmed and they can't get out of the

programming or it's very hard for them. Yeah, they don't even realize it's a program. It was, it was, it was inculcated so early and so deep. And also in a lot of the people who are enforcing drug laws, they are just as much conditioned to believe it too. You know, they, their ideas, I've had someone to tell me what those people think about like what these drugs do. They don't see a difference between, say, PCP and psilocybin. They don't, they just look at it as one evil, like demonic force. People who legitimately believe marijuana, it should be a schedule one drug. It does cause similar harms to her. Yes, exactly. So to me, what, what is happening is now when we're on the news, when you're seeing like, oh, this trial of psilocybin just passed or

is about to get approval or MDMA is getting approval or all these things. And at the very least it, it has to make people recalibrate their thinking regarding these substances. All right. So Duncan's not here, a listener. So I want to tell you, I wonder if Duncan will listen to this. I assume this will just put out, Unlistened 2. When Duncan said that 6, 6 thing, 6 thing, his eyes were glowing red and his teeth, his canines, that they seemed to elongate. So he's coming back. Okay. So here's my question for you. Yes. Last question, because you texted me with like the greatest text ever, which was you were telling me that you had gone into the caole. And when you came out, you thought you should reach out to me. I was so

honored by that. Like anyone coming out of a caole wants to talk to me. I love you. But can you go into some detail about what happened? Tell me please, I'm eager for any news from the man of the caole. It's such a mysterious realm. Well, I'll give you a somewhat long winded answer. Thank you. Because ketamine is a, it's nothing I'm particularly familiar with. I've had, yeah, I've had a fair number of experiences, but it still is, it's, it's utter territory for me than psychedelics, than classical psychedelics like, you know, mescaline, psilocybin, LSD. So some background. So, you know, I have this show called The Mushroom Cure, which is the story of how I tried to treat my OCD not exclusively with mushrooms,

but largely with mushrooms and other classical psychedelics. And I, short version, is I found them really uniquely helpful in a number of, number of ways that I think are specific to psychedelics and wouldn't necessarily generalize to ketamine. But a lot of it, well, this is what we were talking about earlier, is this idea of depth of as more of a metaphor for surrender. And for someone with OCD who has this sort of default of trying to control and manage everything and get everything perfect, you know, in the face of eight or nine grams of mushrooms, you realize like, oh, I, I, I can't control at all. You see, it's that sort of, I use this phrase earlier, this kind of enforced surrender. Yeah. And I've had it both ways. I mean, I had

experiences and I talk about this in The Mushroom Cure, where it was super intense and I tried to hold on and I just got my ass handed to me, you know, real, just profound existential terror. And then learning from that experience, going back into that space and realizing that if I let go in the face of all the fear, all the uncertainty, and this to me is so much of the signature of the psychedelic experience for, for me, generally, not that I haven't had challenging trips, but in general, when I am willing to let go, there's this sense of, oh, there, there's, I'm okay. There's this fundamental sense of okayness. Like I'm trying so, I've had these experiences on mushrooms, on LSD where it's like, whoa, this is so intense. I just, I got to hold on,

I just got to hold on. It's going to pass in three hours or six hours if it's LSD. It's going to pass. Just hold on, just hold on. And I white knuckle it and it's awful. And then I've had these experiences where I got to hold on, I got to hold on. I can't, I just can't, it's too much. And you let go. And one of my trips, the, the metaphor, though I didn't perceive it as a metaphor, it felt like, it was a felt experience. It was like, I was standing at the edge of an 1,000 foot tall cliff. And as I'm saying this, I'm like, did we already talk about this on a previous podcast? Doesn't matter. All right. So I'm standing at the edge of a 1,000 foot tall cliff. And I, and I know I have to step over the edge, but I also know if I do step over the edge, I'm going to plum

it to my death. And finally, I just can't hold on anymore. I can't stand clinging to that, that cliff face. And I let go. And it's like, oh, there's a ledge six inches below me. I didn't even see. It's just, you start to fall and then you're held. And this ledge is not a narrow ledge. It's a vast plateau where I can explore and live and gather food and find lovers. And so that for someone with a propensity to control, there's something just inherently healing and liberating about having not, not, if you'd asked me before psychedelics, I would say like, yeah, I, I feel like there's a sense of fundamental okayness in the universe. I do sense rightly or wrongly to me. The universe doesn't seem entirely neutral to me. I do believe there is a

a force for good, for love that permeates things. It's a choice to see it that way maybe, but it doesn't, that feels true to me, feels true to me. Yeah. So, and I believe that before psychedelics, but having going from this, this belief, this cognitive belief that everything is okay at a deep level to experiencing it in your body is life changing has been life changing for me. Yes. Yeah. Well, the, the, that thing in particular that you're talking about, it reminded me of a story that I know I've said before, but I don't care on the podcast, which is that Ram Dass's Guru, my Guru, Neem Krali Baba is takes. Is that, is that Maharashi? Maharaji. Yes, yeah. I'm a Ram Dass fan, just I never met him, but pod, you know, his, his lectures are phenomenal.

This is an amazing Maharaji story that relates to what we're talking about, which is one of his devotees, I guess you would say, couldn't swim. And so Maharaji had this devotee take him out to the, like the middle of this lake on a boat and said to him, jump, jump in the water. And, you know, he was like tearing up because he's like, you know, I can't swim, but this is his Guru and, you know, and a real Guru. So you're going to do what they ask you to do because you're still in love with them. And they let, they're just, it's all love. There's trust. So he jumps off the edge of the boat and certainly he's just going to plunge down and the water only went up to his waist.

I love it. Yeah. Maharaji is like laughing. Wow. What a great fucking teaching. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really, really good teaching, which is like that, the, the, the, that you, in our lives, we get that unknown thing that, that we're certain should we move into whatever it may be, and it's different for everyone. We're done for. We're dead. And all the fear that goes into peering over that edge and only seeing darkness or, or trying to move your life as far away from the edges you can go.

Yeah. Listening to make sure there isn't like cracks breaking below you that will turn where you're at into the ledge, jumping off is the one of the most liberating things ever. And because then suddenly you don't have to always be defending against that or trying to, Jesus Christ is that weird thing. You stand at the edge of a building and you like get vertigo like, Oh my God. Oh my God. You're, you're completely safe. It's not like you're going to fall off. You can stand up if I'm walking on a white line painted on the road. I'm not like, Oh my God. And I know I, one of my friends does like that insane urban

exploration shit. They'll hang from, you know, they'll hang from like pull up bars or whatever you want to call them off of. I'm getting that vertigo, just imagining that in my life. But the point they made is like, it's no, like hanging on a playground and hanging off a building. It's the same amount of energy. It's just mentally one is very different from the other. But yeah, so it's that to me is, I know exactly what you mean, which in, and I think that is one of the gifts psychedelics will give people is that the very least they'll redefine what they think the edge is. Yeah. And find, and you know, this is, this is personal. I'm not saying this is it for everyone, but for me, I generally have come out

with a sense of there's something. I don't know what it is. I'm not going to say it's Jesus or Allah or even, but there's a sense of there is something holding me and holding us and taking care of us in a way. I mean, it's so hard to use language because once you start using language, you're, yeah, it's a felt sense though. It's not something that I can quite put into words, but that has been also integral to healing from OCD with OCD because it still is absolutely a factor of my life to greater or lesser degrees. You know, again, the overall trend is less and less OCD and less more and more freedom. But, but yeah, this sense of that I can let go and things will be okay. That, that, that was really drilled, felt deeply on psychedelics. And, and yeah, has, has

been life changing for me. This is chogim. Trump is famous quote. The bad news is you're falling. The good news is there's no ground. Now, tell me please. Yeah, okay. Oh, what please? I gotta hear from my people. Yeah. So having said all this as singing the praises of psychedelics for me, I will say that of late, I have not found psychedelics. First, I haven't done many journeys recently. The last time I did a real full on journey was ayahuasca pre pandemic. I've had a couple of mushroom journeys solo since then. And it's felt like during those journeys, it's felt like, oh, yeah, man, I needed this. But I'll be honest, it hasn't seemed to make much of an impact with whatever I've been struggling with at the time. And I had, so my OCD is primarily about decision

making. I get obsessed with, you know, should I do this or that, this or that, this or that, this or that, and I can ping pong back and forth and make and reverse decisions and get into these sort of compulsive loops of making and reversing decisions. And it's gotten dramatically better. But it still flares up. At my worst, it was like, it would take me hours to get dressed because I'd put on and take off shirts. I'd be walking down the streets of New York City. And I'd be like, wait, wait, I'm walking down the south side of 18th Street. Let me cross over to the north side because they'll be more like it was every decision. Started working with psychedelics and other things. I mean, the mushroom cure, it's a long show because there's a lot of things that help and it is

ultimately, thank you, thank you. And it's ultimately, it's entertainment. I'm not, it's not a how to manual, though I try to also help people who have questions, you know, who message me and that sort of thing. But point being psychedelics were integral in recovering. And the low level paralysis with these small decisions, I'm completely free of I do not have that anymore. Yeah, which is life changing. It's easy for me to forget. But that was hours every day that was consumed. And I just don't have it. But where it does flare up is with bigger but not that big decisions often related to career. Should I do a run of my show in this city or that city, that sort of thing. And so it'll typically, you know, they'll, they'll be a few times a year often where it gets really

bad. And then maybe like one price a month where it gets kind of bad, but it doesn't generally take over. But then the pandemic came. And I think a lot of people had this experience for different reasons where it was actually a respite. I didn't have any career decisions to make none. I wasn't going to be performing anywhere. And so I kind of look at it as I got a little out of it's like if you're an alcoholic, and you know, you've been abstinent, you've been doing a good job. But then suddenly, all the bars are closed, you don't even have to work at it for a little while. And then suddenly now the bars are open, the world is opening up again. And I'm re confronted with these triggering decisions that I hadn't had contemplated in 14 or 15 months.

And I'll be honest, Duncan, it got, you know, a few months ago, it got, it was the worst it had been in many years. Sorry. And very humbling. I was really not functioning well. I was, yeah, just not, not just sick. I was ill. I was ill. I was ill. And then of course, there's an additional thing that comes in for me now, which is like, Hey, man, you're supposed to be the guy who who did all this self healing with mushrooms. People are looking to you for guidance. What a fucking fraud you are. You're spending four, you know, a month trying to decide whether to go to this city or that city. You like, you can never do your show again. You're a liar. You know, it was all so all this coming in. And listen, I'm trying to work with it. I have tools now. And the primary

tool is acceptance at a physical level, really tuning into the sensations in my body of deep fear and loss that I don't want to feel that the OCD is designed to try to get rid of those sensations. So I know if I can feel them, I may not feel great, they may not go away, but I'll have a degree of freedom if that makes sense. I don't have to, yeah, try to, because the OCD is trying to undercut them. So if I, if I let them in instead, and I'm trying to do it, but it's just, it's difficult, it's painful. I'm not doing. And so I'm talking to a friend of mine who, close friend who also works with maps and is a therapist. And I was like, yeah, I guess, I guess I should just, you know, do a do a large dose of mushrooms. I don't know what else to do. But

the last couple of times I've done mushrooms, it hasn't felt particularly helpful. And he's like, he's like, do you have any ketamine? And I was like, yeah, you gave me some. I won't mention this person's name, but he gave me some nasal spray ketamine, like, you know, medical grade ketamine like a year ago. And he's like, you know, I would try that. And what he said, which I'm curious, your perspective on this Duncan, but he's like, you know, to me, ketamine is more of just kind of a pure biomedicine. That was the word he used biomedicine. It's just doing shit in your brain that just seems to me like maybe a little more concrete than psychedelics. Well, that's the data too. And my friend has a clinic and he was explaining to me that, you know, if you get the

psychedelic effect, that's a bonus. But the efficacy doesn't seem to be connected at all to people reporting. You could have no experience, and you're still going to have the same statistical probability of a remission of your depression. So the implication is that that it is a, it's doing some kind of, you know, healing that is beyond like, but I think all of them, you could say they are, but specifically with, I think that's one of the beautiful things about ketamine is like, you don't have to worry about having some holy fucking contact with the divine necessarily. It's still, if you're someone struggling with depression, there's still, I can't remember what the probability is, but a relatively high probability that it's going to

help you. Yeah, yeah. And well, so that was my experience. So as it turns out, I didn't realize, I actually didn't, there wasn't that much ketamine left in this, in this bottle. And, but so I did it that afternoon. It was, I was at my parents house at the time. And, you know, when I, one thing that I, I'm open about my OCD, and in some ways my parents are the hardest people to be open with, because they're going to worry the most. But when it was really bad, I was so glad they knew what was going on. So I actually said to my mother the day before, I was like, I think I may need to do a lot of mushrooms. And I think I'm going to go to, I had a friend who had a house somewhere. And this is what my mom said, bless her. She said,

you know, I'd rather you just do the mushrooms here. That's such a mom. My parents have never done psychedelics. They've never even smoked weed. She was like, I just feel like just, you can go up into, you know, our room, their room is on the third floor and just, you know, take your mushroom to won't disturb you. Yeah. Yeah. But when I talked to my friend who suggested ketamine, I told her, I was like, so I'm going to do, you know, I told them a little bit about ketamine in the past, but I was like, I'm going to do ketamine. It's safe. Just basically don't come upstairs. I'll probably be down in a couple of hours. Yeah. It was an emotional moment. And I was really broken. I was, you know, I just felt very, very, very ill. And so I closed the blinds and polish

off the bottle. And I realized there wasn't that much left in it. And to what you were saying, I did not have a mystical experience at all. I got some of that, you know, kind of ketamine body buzz. I was listening to a playlist my friend had made. And I was kind of, you know, merging a little bit with the music, but no real mystical experience. It passed because I didn't go that deep. Within an hour, I was out of it for maybe 45 minutes. And I was like, oh, well, that, that was a bust. I didn't, you know, I didn't see the face of God. So I called up my friend, I was like, shit, maybe I should smoke some weed just to try to kick it in more. And he's like, don't do that. Because, again, we're not necessarily going for this particular subjective

experience. Let's see what happens now. Yeah. And so I didn't. And I, I came down from the bedroom. And over the next few hours, I felt peace for the first time in like this, this particular OCD crisis had been like a month, man. It was, it was, it was gnarly. And I just felt quiet. My brain just felt quiet. And the next, yeah, and I just, so I wasn't obsessing for the first time in a month about this particular, ultimately not that important, but for me, dominating decision. And the next day, we're still not to the Kale experience. The next day, it was fascinating to me. And again, I'm curious if this accords with your experience. My brain went back to OCD. My brain was like, yo, we got to figure this out. Are we going to do this or this? But my body

would not get recruited into this project, meaning I would was feeling zero anxiety in my body. So my brain just kind of shrugged its shoulders at a certain point was like, what, you're not going to, you're not going to energize us with all this anxiety. There wasn't any force behind it. So the thoughts just kind of petered out. Then the next day, the anxiety started to come back. But I'd had enough of an opening that I was now more able and willing to use my tools of physical acceptance to meet this anxiety in a way that it didn't, I didn't fall back into OCD. Effectively, this, you know, sub psychedelic ketamine experience broke this particular OCD cycle for me. Wow. And so then, so yeah, so the cycle ended. I felt, you know, increasing freedom. And then

this was very recently. Can I, we're a little interjecting the real question. Yeah, please. I want to hear again, I want to hear this next with your experience. The most astounding thing if you're someone who struggles with things like this, because I know you probably, it sounds like with, well, it sounds similar to depression, like you don't, when you're entering a depressive episode, you don't know how fucking long it's going to last. That's what's so awful about it is it's like, when I get a cold, I can roll, you know, I know it's you know, it's going to be a few weeks, maybe a week, depending on what, maybe a month, the most, or I'm going to go to the fucking doctor, but with depression, and my friends who really suffer

from it, it's like, it could be, it could be a fucking decade. And if you've come out of it, and experience the other side, and then you, you feel like, Oh, no, no, I might be going back in. And it is the most insanely beautiful thing to take ketamine. And by that afternoon, by that afternoon, you're feeling, oh, you're feeling better. And the next day, you're feeling better. And then, and at that point, not only is it amazing, because suddenly you're, you're, you're not depressed in the way that you were before. But also, you know, holy shit, if I need it, I've got a safety parachute thing here, that I have a tool that I did not before. That's what's incredible. But then if you're me, you keep doing it. That's why I can't do it. The fact that

you, you had a nasal spray around your house for a year, forget it. I can't do that. I can't keep, I can't have it around at all. Do you not do it at all now? I can't. I put, I got addicted. I punched my ticket. So now I, you know, you, I can't, I'm a dad. So it's like, what am I going to do? Fucking rails of Academy with my kids downstairs eating breakfast. I can't do that. So no, I just, I have like, if I get depressed again, I'll go to a clinic. You know what I mean? So you will do Ketamine, but you don't have it lying around? No, I can't have it at the house. And is that, is that something that you, you'll, you'll avail yourself of?

Like, yeah, this is part of your tool. You'll go to, all right. If I needed to go to a clinic, I would totally do it. I just would, I'm not, I can't do it. Like, I, I, I blew it for myself. I mean, I'm not, not to say that it's some future point. Maybe there's like a fun recreational way to do it. But right now it's like, I just, I don't have the time to risk like getting habituated to Ketamine again. But that doesn't mean that it is incredibly therapeutic. And it's truly helped me. I was just dummy and let myself get hooked on it. Well, and that is, it seems like for a lot of people, Ketamine does have that risk and

for whatever reason, it doesn't for me. And I don't think it's willpower or anything like that. I think I just don't love it that much, frankly. I just don't love it as much as, but so I had this experience, you know, got broke out of this OCD cycle. And just like you were saying, I felt, I was like, okay, great. Now I have this tool, man. This is like what I haven't, I, I've never in the past, I've tried sometimes doing psychedelics when I'm in an OCD crisis. And it ultimately has not seemed to affect the trajectory that much. But this seemed like it did. So got some freedom. And then I was falling into not quite the same, not quite an OCD crisis, but yeah, just feeling anxiety about deeper questions in terms of, well, things are opening

up now. What am I, I'm single. I had a pretty, you know, deep relationship during the pandemic that ended. So there's, so there's good question there of like, okay, I'm the same age as you're Duncan. I ultimately want partnership and family. And I don't have that. And suddenly, just this rapid reopening, because it kind of came out of nowhere, you know, and I'm suddenly back in New York after being at my parents place for a while. And it's, so there's that question like, wait, I'm 47. I'm single. What am I doing with my life? And wait, what am I doing with my life? Do I want to, I don't know if I want to keep, you know, banging away at stand up and I have these other projects. So these more real world questions weighing on me, but it started getting the anxiety

started feeling paralyzing. And so I was like, ah, so needless to say, after I finished off the spray bottle of ketamine, and I saw how helpful it was, I immediately laid my hands on some more ketamine to have as a, you know, break in case of emergency thing. So I pulled out the ketamine as this anxiety was getting really intense. And, and this time I did, I was actually intentionally trying, this was a powder. So it's a little bit difficult to measure. I was trying to fall short of full K-hole, but I, I failed. I went into it and I mean, what the fuck is that space? It is such a, it is, so to bring it back to you. Well, two things I'll say. First off, it didn't solve, in this case, ketamine wasn't a panacea. And I think it wasn't a panacea because these are

real questions I have to grapple with out in the world in my sober existence, not that I can't rely and use other tools and alternate states of consciousness to provide perspective. But this is, this is, I mean, Freud said the two big things are love and work, relationship and career. And for you and me, that means creativity. And so these are, these are questions I've grappled with in different forms for my entire adult life. And I'm going to continue grappling with, there's no shortcut. So the ketamine wasn't like, Oh yeah, this is, yeah, your soulmate is on the corner of Second Avenue and 4th Street and finished that pilot script, and it's going to get picked up by Netflix. You're all good. Yeah. So I did, which was all in itself, a helpful thing was like,

yeah, this tool is helpful when this can be helpful in certain contexts. But ultimately, there's work that we, part of being human, I believe, and part of, this may be another right turn, I'll make this a quick one. But I've certainly, the question of God is, is a big one for me. Yeah, it's a fucking big one for me. Because part of what's helped my OCD is a 12 step program. So essentially, you substitute obsessive and compulsions for alcohol. I'm powerless over my obsessions and compulsions, and you try to believe a higher power can help you. And it has been helpful, but there's also that grappling with the question of God is, I mean, in some ways, that is the question. And I agree. Yeah. And what was my, I lost my train of thought there.

That's okay, because it led you to something wonderful, which is just, you know, to me, like the, the, the, Oh, this is, I'll say this. Go. All right. So I've, you know, so I have discussions with friends, some of whom have more faith with me, where it's kind of like, I'm trying to resolve logical issues with the idea of God. Because I, that seems like that has to be part of faith for me is resolving some of these things, or getting some peace with them. And one of the questions I've had is like, yeah, this is the most basic question, but why so much suffering if, if, if God is omniscient, benevolent and, and omnipotent, if God can do anything and and loves us, why, why AIDS babies, why terrorist attacks, et cetera, et cetera. And then more

generally mapping it onto my life, why struggle, why OCD, why loneliness, why, why, you know, creative frustration. And one thing that occurred to me in one of these conversations was like, well, if there was no struggle, what, what would be the purpose of existing? If it wasn't, if there wasn't some, at some sense, it feels like, yeah, part of why we exist is because we are in, at times, confrontation with the universe. We are trying to assert ourselves and, and shape reality. Yes. And if it was all like, oh, you're, you're a lonely atom. Okay, here's your soulmate. Oh, your career is not quite where it wants. Here's the Netflix deal. I mean, what would be the point in that? What would it be? It would be boring. So, to Ketamine's point, I don't know exactly how

I got onto that. Oh, yeah, I guess the love and work thing. So it's kind of like, yeah, man, this is, you know, guess what? You have the great privilege and challenge of existing as a seemingly independent or somewhat independent entity in this reality. And this is part of the game for you, is figuring this stuff out. You haven't figured this out yet. So, you know, Ketamine is not going to give you the answer. But where you came up was just the, yeah, there's, it's such, because I know you've had more experience than I have, and we've experienced Ketamine together once. Yeah. Like what, it was really where you came in, I was like, I want to ask Duncan what the fuck is going on here, man, because this is in this K-hole state, and I've probably gone

into K-hole, you know, six or seven times over the years. And it's, I always come out of it with a sense of wonder, but also like with psychedelics, classical psychedelics, there's a sense of kind of like, oh, I know this. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like there's a deep familiarity. Yeah. And with Ketamine, there is almost the opposite of that. There's like, what was that? That was, I don't know how to map that in. So for me, it was, you know, the sense of presence that I'm somewhat communing with, but it feels kind of alien. And, and it doesn't, certainly with psychedelics, the senses of presences have generally been love, benevolence. And with Ketamine, it's not malevolence, but it's maybe more of a neutral thing. And I think it's

more of like a, it's a, it's a vehicle of sorts. Like, and I think it's really great to make the distinction between the visionary potential of Ketamine and the potential that is currently being studied and used for like treating depression. Because it's too diff, to me, it's two different things. I was, after the initial, like using it to help with my depression, upon realizing like, oh my God, this is like the most visionary substance that I've ever encountered. And the visionary in the most alien way. But when I began to realize like, oh, you can actually navigate through this space, like you don't have to be, you know, anyone who has like, spent any amount of time with Ketamine, and especially people who love, love the kales,

probably knows the thrilling realization of, oh wait, I don't always have to be in the infernal realms, which seem to exist in, with Ketamine. Like there's a absolutely terrifying, at least in my own experience, potential hell realm that you experience with Ketamine. But you can navigate through the, through those realms to different places. There's different places you can go to that for repeat. And I've chatted with other people about this, like a field of flowers, a mothership. Oh, like there's like weird, also that the, what's, what's really curious to me is the, the, what you're talking about, a sense of a presence, a sense of being communicated to, but in the most alien way. And then I'm almost, again, this is all my own experience with it,

a viewfinder like experience where it's like, remember those old viewfinders where it goes, when it's done showing you something, it starts giving you another, another vision. And within that, there's a collaborative, like a carousel of images that are right. Like here's, here's this thing. And then that thing, and then that thing mixed in with that is the, the identity, whatever you thought your identity was, has now been fractalized. And, you know, within that fractalization, there is, well, that's why I brought up death in the beginning, because that our communication started with you talking about the kale is a, what, for lack of a better word, I would only think of as some form of death, some like apex of such bizarre intensity that you feel yourself

being drawn into, you're like impossible, something impossible to resist, like you're being pulled into a twister, or like a black hole, or a singularity, or a vortex. It is so powerful. And, and if you resist it at all, terrifying, that's those are the hell realms. But the moment you let go, wow, wow. And the, and the, so yeah, that to me, that's like the, my, my analysis of it is it's some kind of bardo state. It's allowing you to disentangle with your, you're, you're able to free yourself from body, the normal way that we're attached to our bodies. And in that state, I think they're, there's, you're frozen now, Duncan. But you asked the perfect question if you, that's, it's like asking for an ear beating. Like, you know what I mean? It's like asking

someone who just got back from Burning Man, I was Burning Man, the L who stood out district, watch out, I could go on for like, you would be like an old man, you would be gray haired and in a wheelchair by the time I finished describing what I think Ketamine is. Listen, we got to wrap it up, man. I am so happy that Ketamine told you to text me. And I'm, I'm so happy that I was able to have this conversation with you. Can you please tell people where they can find you? Did you make the decision about where you're headed next? Yeah. So I am in New York for the time being for probably July and August doing, I'm not, I don't have anything scheduled for the mushroom cures. That's like, that's a theater solo show, but I am doing standup in various clubs in New

York. If you go to my Instagram and social media and website, you will see those posted. I will likely be in the Bay area doing the mushroom cure and a new show I'm working on in the coming months, possibly October. I'll probably also make it down to LA in those months for probably just a short engagement. And yeah, beyond that, I have that podcast I mentioned not therapy where my psychiatrist friend does quasi therapy on me. I've been working on another podcast that may or may not be launched, depending on when, when Duncan gets his act together and records a song for this thing and puts it out today. This will be up in an hour and a half. Oh, holy shit. Okay. All right,

I'll update my website. If you don't mind, this is the deadline that I need to motivate me as we were discussing. Get it done. Get it done. All the links you need to find Adam are going to be at DuncanTrustle.com. My friend, thank you so much. Thank you, Duncan. Great talking, man. Re-communing with you. Always. That was Adam Strauss, everybody. All the links you need to find Adam along with the offer codes from our beloved sponsors are located at DuncanTrustle.com on this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Won't you do me a favor? Subscribe to us, sign up for the Patreon, use the offer codes, but most importantly, have a wonderful week and I'll see you next week. It's a two-episode week. I'll see you then. Hare Krishna.

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